Giving Gaming a new meaning

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Covers come off UK spy plane: "Images of the UK's first prototype stealth surveillance aircraft have been unveiled.

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which has been built by BAE Systems, is known as the Corax, or as the Raven.

The Corax bears some resemblances to a cancelled US military spy plane called DarkStar, analysts have said.

Jane's International Defence Review said the unmanned aircraft 'indicated a new direction in combat vehicles for the UK's armed forces'.

Bill Sweetman, the magazine's aerospace and technology editor, said Corax could represent one member of a family of stealthy aircraft based around a similar central body but using different outer wings optimised for different missions.

'If you look at that Corax shape, it's very reminiscent of something that's designed to fly fairly high, fairly slow and have quite a long endurance. It looks rather typical for a surveillance aircraft,' he told the BBC News website.

'But if you take those long outer wings off and put on shorter swept wings, you have a somewhat faster aircraft that would be more of a penetrating strike platform.'

Future plans

The UK has reportedly terminated plans for a future manned combat aircraft and is working closely with the US on 'Project Churchill'.

This effort is focused on the joint, airborne command and control of pilotless combat air vehicles from 2015 onwards.

The Corax prototype has been built to investigate the stability, control and performance of the design, which is said to maximise all-round stealth.

Stealth technology refers to a variety of techniques used to render aircraft, ships and missiles less visible - and ideally invisible - to radar.

The prototype Corax was first flown in 2004 after a 10-month development programme."

Pete's Points

Only yesterday we heard about the attempt on the life of someone in Pakistan using a remote controlled aircraft. Today we see the covers come off the UK's pilotless aircraft.

If you think about it we have been spending a lot of money in the past 20 years building computer equipment that is really fast and really powerful. Equipment that helps people learn to play high resolution games from a very early age.

At the same time as this has been going on we have had the defence establishments around the world developing the technology to enable using satellite technology virtual real time displays that enable a pilot to see what is ahead of him and to use the electronic capabilities in the aircraft to deal with a threat or a target without having to be there. Take this one step further and you could actually start to mount an argument that in the future we will be able to use the children who are the very best at playing computer games as our pilots of the future where the horror of killing and maiming people is reduced because it all seems like an extended computer game. A computer game where the characters are not computer generated, but real people.

We saw a science fiction movie which had this underlying theme some years ago - I think it was called "Starfighter".

Is what is happening in the sphere of remote controlled aircraft all that removed from that sci fi scenario?

I hope I am wrong about what I am about to suggest next - but it seems to me that the instant that any government starts down the path towards fighting wars at a distance is the instant that someone can make a case that wars are an acceptable way of settling disputes because they are 'clean' and represent a way of damaging the 'enemy' while reducing the risk for 'the good guys'.

Or is all this just too far fetched to be even in the ball park of being true?